is author of the book "renegade, making of the president" and he joins us from the white house. we should say, richard, the white house is denying this, but even if they aren't thinking about the ads, are they thinking about how the tea party works into their strategy for the fall midterms? >> reporter: well, it's hard for anyone not to think about these kind of things but the white housen sifts there is no truth behind the story, they are sticking to their strategy of pointing out the sharp differences on economic policy. remember, the president's doing this town hall, cnbc town hall, hater this morning, and what they want to point out is the other side has the set of policies tried before and failed, if they say, if the individual candidates in their races want to go out and point out these differences, about the tea party, about a republican party that's out of the mainstream, they're free to go ahead and do that, but that's not the message coming out of the white house for this election. >> so the message from a former president, i guess you could even say is a little bit nuisanced. l
